No abstract

In the development of semiconductor devices, the bipolar junction transistor (BJT) features prominently as being the first solid state transistor that helped to usher in the digital revolution. For any new semiconductor, therefore, the fabrication and characterization of the BJT are important for both technological importance and historical significance. Here, we demonstrate a BJT device in exfoliated TMD semiconductor WSe2. We use buried gates to electrostatically create doped regions with back-to-back p-n junctions. We demonstrate two central characteristics of a bipolar device: current gain when operated as a BJT and a photocurrent gain when operated as a phototransistor. We demonstrate a current gain of 1000 and photocurrent gain of 40 and describe features that enhance these properties due to the doping technique that we employ.

Realizing basic semiconductor devices such as p-n junctions are necessary for developing thin-film and optoelectronic technologies in emerging planar materials such as MoS2. In this work, electrostatic doping by buried gates is used to study the electronic and optoelectronic properties of p-n junctions in exfoliated MoS2 flakes. Creating a controllable doping gradient across the device leads to the observation of the photovoltaic effect in monolayer and bilayer MoS2 flakes. For thicker flakes, strong ambipolar conduction enables realization of fully reconfigurable p-n junction diodes with rectifying current-voltage characteristics, and diode ideality factors as low as 1.6. The spectral response of the photovoltaic effect shows signatures of the predicted band gap transitions. For the first excitonic transition, a shift of >4kBT is observed between monolayer and bulk devices, indicating a thickness-dependence of the excitonic coulomb interaction. Two-dimensional (2-D) crystalline materials have attracted a significant amount of research efforts since the isolation of graphene by micromechanical exfoliation [1,2,3,4]. They show promise in novel electronic and optoelectronic applications, where the low-dimensionality provides ideal electrostatic control for field-effect transistor devices, or large area-to-volume ratio for sensors and photoelectric devices. Among 2-D crystals, MoS2, a transition metal dichalcogenide (TMDC), has received particular attention as channel material for thin-film or flexible electronics [5,6,7] because its mobility is considerably higher than amorphous or polycrystalline materials, and because it can be used in various heterostructures to enable diverse electronic applications [8,9,10,11,12].The most remarkable attributes of MoS2 lie in its bandstructure, which shows a crossover from an indirect bandgap (~1.3 eV) in bulk to a direct one (~1.9 eV) for a monolayer [13,14]. In the monolayer form, MoS2 has been used in optoelectronics [15,16,17], and has been investigated to enable a new class

An analytical expression is derived for the conductance modulation of a ballistic two-dimensional Datta-Das Spin Field Effect Transistor (SPINFET) as a function of gate voltage. Using this expression, we show that the recently observed conductance modulation in a two-dimensional SPINFET structure does not match the theoretically expected result very well. This calls into question the claimed demonstration of the SPINFET and underscores the need for further careful investigation.

Graphene p-n junctions offer a potentially powerful approach towards controlling electron trajectories via collimation and focusing in ballistic solid-state devices. The ability of p-n junctions to control electron trajectories depends crucially on the doping profile and roughness of the junction. Here, we use four-probe scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy (STM/STS) to characterize two state-of-the-art graphene p-n junction geometries at the atomic scale, one with CMOS polySi gates and another with naturally cleaved graphite gates. Using spectroscopic imaging, we characterize the local doping profile across and along the p-n junctions. We find that realistic junctions exhibit non-ideality both in their geometry as well as in the doping profile across the junction. We show that the geometry of the junction can be improved by using the cleaved edge of van der Waals metals such as graphite to define the junction. We quantify the geometric roughness and doping profiles of junctions experimentally and use these parameters in Nonequilibrium Green's Function based simulations of focusing and collimation in these realistic junctions. We find that for realizing Veselago focusing, it is crucial to minimize lateral interface roughness which only natural graphite gates achieve, and to reduce junction width, in which both devices under investigation underperform. We also find that carrier collimation is currently limited by the non-linearity of the doping profile across the junction. Our work provides benchmarks of the current graphene p-n junction quality and provides guidance for future improvements.